OUR LEADERSHIP
Roxana Bendezú
FOUNDING DIRECTOR
Roxana Bendezú is a descendant of the Quechua People of the Andes, born and mostly raised in Lima, Perú. She migrated to Turtle Island first in 1993 and later in 1999. She is an activist documentarian, socio-political analyst, and the founder and executive director of Migrant Roots Media. She has been working on pro-migrant, pro-human rights causes at different capacities for the last decade.
Pronouns: She / Her / Hers
Alejandra Mejía
CHIEF EDITOR
Alejandra Mejía is the Chief Editor of Migrant Roots Media. She received her BA in Comparative Literature and Latinx Studies from Williams College in 2017 and is currently an Assistant Editor at Duke University Press where she acquires books in Latinx History. Her politics and devotion to migrant justice are largely informed by her lived experiences as a working-class Central American immigrant in the United States.
Pronouns: She / Her / Hers
Bárbara Sostaita
HIGHER EDUCATION DIRECTOR
Bárbara was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and migrated with her family to North Carolina sin papeles in 1998. She is a PhD candidate in religious studies at The University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (UNC). Focused on the Sonora-Arizona borderlands, her dissertation documents moments of care and intimacy that expose the impermanence and instability of border militarization. Bárbara is also a freelance writer and her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Bitch, and Remezcla among others.
Pronouns: She / Her / Hers
Dubie Toa-Kwapong
AFRICA MIGRATION ETHNOGRAPHER
Dubie Toa-Kwapong is a 2nd/3rd generation and cyclical migrant born in Norway to parents from Ghana and the UK. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University. Inspired by the complex homeland commitments held by her family members and migrants the world over, her dissertation research explores the impact of intergenerational nostalgia and memory on the decision-making practices of Afrodiasporic return migrants to Accra, Ghana. Her research and commitment to migrant justice flow from an attunement to the ongoing consequences of European imperial border-making (along with other inheritances of colonialism) on the lives of Africans on the continent and in the global diaspora – including the entangled migratory journeys of her ancestors.
Pronouns: She / Her / Hers
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Loan Tran
Loan Tran was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam to a Vietnamese mother and a Vietnamese-White father who was born to a U.S. military personnel during the American War on Viet Nam. Their family migrated to the U.S. in the mid-90s. They grew up in Charlotte, NC where they began organizing around migrant justice and LGBTQ student safety. Their family's experience with imperialism and the prison system is what informs much of their organizing. Loan is currently based in Durham, NC where they support grassroots organizing led by Black, Brown, LGBTQ, and migrant communities.
Pronouns: They / Them / Theirs
Ricky Leung
Ricky is co-founder and Communications and Outreach Director at North Carolina Asian Americans Together. Ricky was born in Hong Kong and moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, when he was 8 years old with his immediate family. He studied journalism and mass communication at UNC Chapel Hill, concentrating in visual communication and design. He began his career in DC at National Geographic and at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, where he learned more about his identity as an Asian American in the United States and the historical legacy, diversity, and positionality of people with Asian heritage, both those who were born in this country and those who migrated here because of myriad different reasons. After getting more involved with AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) grassroots organizers in DC, Ricky returned to North Carolina in 2010 in hopes of bringing that AAPI experience to the state he considers now his home and worked at NC Policy Watch, a project of the North Carolina Justice Center, before joining NCAAT fulltime, where he now focuses on building relationships and community among Asian American populations.
Pronouns: He / Him / His
Rahi Hasan
Rahi is a dancer, cultural organizer, educator, impact strategist and a multimedia artist experimenting with ways to challenge power on all fronts and create space for healing and radical imagination. They immigrated to Queens, New York from Dhaka, Bangladesh and lived there for almost 15 years before moving to Durham, NC. Rahi completed their BA in Philosophy and MA in Philosophy of Law from Queens College prior to completing their certificate in Documentary Arts from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Rahi’s work spans autobiography, collaborative social documentary, experimental video, installation, reflective/theoretical discourse, and text-based approaches.
Pronouns: They / Them / Theirs